Hercules Powder Yellow 100 x 6 | HERCULES YELLOW ROUND 100 X 6 - Hercules yellow and black 100 No. 6 caps tin, 1 3/4 in. dia, 2 3/4 in. tall; acquired from Mike Krystoff (The Hercules Powder Company was one of the several small explosives companies acquired by the Dupont Company in the 1880s. By the beginning of the 20th century, Dupont had absorbed so many of its competitors that it was producing two-thirds of the dynamite and gunpowder sold in the United States. One such competitor was the Laflin & Rand Powder Company, Dupont's leading post-Civil War competitor in the explosives industry, but also an important partner in the Gunpowder Trade Association (GTA). To better handle the growing complexities of business after the Civil War, the Laflin Powder Company was incorporated in 1866. A year later, Albert Tyler Rand of the competing Smith & Rand Powder Company proposed uniting the two firms, and in 1869 both sides agreed to merge into the Laflin & Rand Powder Company of New York, with Rand as the new firm's first president. In 1872 Laflin & Rand collaborated with friendly rival Dupont to establish the GTA, a trust comprising the nation's top explosives manufacturers that sought to regulate the powder industry with price controls, protected territories and sales quotas. The two companies likewise cooperated in the emerging high explosives, or dynamite, field jointly establishing the Repauno Chemical Company in 1880, the Hercules Powder Company in 1882, and the Eastern Dynamite Company in 1895. Their combined efforts at industry consolidation and control were so successful that by 1900, Laflin & Rand and Dupont together commanded over two-thirds of the entire explosives industry. In October 1902 Dupont purchased Laflin & Rand, operating it as a subsidiary. However, in 1912, a federal court, citing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and Dupont’s GTA activities, ordered Dupont broken up and dissolving Laflin & Rand. It was through this court-ordered action that the Hercules Powder Company was reborn, a manufacturer of explosives ostensibly separate from Dupont. Hercules received Laflin & Rand's patents for smokeless powder, along with several of its old plants. The division of the Dupont Company into Dupont, Atlas Powder Company, and Hercules Powder Company was intended to foster competition in the explosives industry, but in reality the antitrust agreement allowed the connection between Hercules and the parent company to remain intact. The new company was staffed by executives who had been transplanted from the Dupont headquarters across the street into the main offices of Hercules in Wilmington, Delaware. The Hercules Powder Company was set up as a fully developed business entity, complete with several explosives factories, a healthy segment of the explosives market, and a $5 million "loan" in its treasury. Hercules began as an explosives company serving the mining industry, gun owners, and the military. Like other manufacturers of explosives, Hercules preferred many small plants to a few large ones. Due to the company's risks involved in product transportation, these plants were located in proximity to customers, rather than near the source of raw materials. The company's first big break came in 1916 when Hercules signed a lucrative contract to supply Britain with acetone. The company also benefited from its sale of gunpowder to the army. In 1920, Hercules began to manufacture cotton cellulose from the lint left over from cotton seeds once the high-quality cotton has been extracted. Cotton cellulose is a fiber that has hundreds of industrial uses. When treated with nitroglycerine it becomes nitrocellulose, important in the production of lacquers and plastics. Hercules quickly became the world's leading maker of cotton cellulose. By 1935, Hercules had five divisions: explosives, naval stores (naval stores is a term that refers to products derived from tree sap), nitrocellulose, chemical cotton, and paper products. At the time of America's entrance into World War II, Hercules was the country's largest producer of naval stores and the third-largest producer of explosives. In the 1950s the company entered two markets it would later dominate: DMT and polypropylene. DMT is the chemical base for polyester fiber and was sold as a commodity to both chemical and polyester makers, including Dupont. Using waste gases from refineries, they manufactured polypropylene, an increasingly important type of plastic. In 1959, Hercules diversified into rocket fuels and propulsion systems for the Polaris, Minuteman, and Honest John missiles. In 1968, the company changed its name from Hercules Powder Company to Hercules Inc. and abandoned the explosives business. Laflin & Rand, the former subsidiary of Hercules Powder Company, continues today as the Alliant Powder Company, specializing in military gunpowder manufacturing. See Van Gelder and Schlatter, History of the Explosives Industry in America, pp 219-252 and 499-528)